A Caribbean lawyer friend of mine, a very perceptive gentleman, occasionally sends me pieces of writing on this subject or that on the basis that they will interest me. It’s on a wide variety of matters, some large some small, but frequently they have to do with cricket in some form; he’s a fanatic cricket fan, in the league of Ian McDonald and Reds Perreira, the genuine article, and one of the pieces he sent me recently was a long well-written column by an English sports writer bemoaning the decline of interest in Test cricket and speaking with great nostalgia for “the slower time” once experienced in the more leisurely nature of that version of the game.
The article dwells on things other than cricket to be found in that form – reminding one generally of the famous aphorism from CLR James, “What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?” – by someone who is trying very hard to show the reader what he/she is missing by not sitting in the stands for six hours a day, over five days, being
